Actress Jean Stapleton was powerhouse in saving Val-Kill

Aug. 17, 2013

Jean Stapleton, Edwina Gilbert and Joyce Ghee during a luncheon for the actress given at Mills Mansion by the Hyde Park Visual Environment Committee. Gilbert was president of the committee. Ghee was chairman of the Hyde Park Visual Environment Committee's Cottage Committee. This luncheon was held on Stapleton's first visit to Hyde Park. / Courtesy photo

Written by

John W. Barry

Poughkeepsie Journal

Cast members of 'All in the Family,' from left, Carroll O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, and Sally Struthers pose with their Emmys backstage at the 24th annual Emmy Awards in Hollywood, Ca., Sunday night, May 14, 1972. O'Connor and Stapleton won outstanding continued performance by an actor and actress in a leading role in a comedy series. Struthers tied in the category of outstanding performance by an actress in a supporting role in a comedy. / AP Photo

VAL-KILL

History: Val-Kill was the only place Eleanor Roosevelt called home. It was here that she pursued her political and social interests, wrote her My Day column and worked on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today, visitors can tour Roosevelt’s Val-Kill and stroll the grounds. Open: May through October from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursdays through Mondays. Guided tours are available throughout the day. The last tour of the day is 4 p.m. November through April , Thursdays through Mondays, guided tours available at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. It is closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. The grounds are open daily, year-round from sunrise to sunset. Information: Call 845-229-9422 (Thursday-Monday). Website:www.nps.gov/elro

Jean Stapleton and Paul Gantt play Eleanor and President Franklin D. Roosevelt as they ride in the motorcade to the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park, June 1984. / Courtesy photo

Eleanor Roosevelt / AP Photo

Jean Stapleton

Stone Cottage on Thursday at the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site at Val-Kill in Hyde Park. / Darryl Bautista/Poughkeepsie Journal

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Edith Bunker helped save a cornerstone of Eleanor Roosevelt’s legacy.

Jean Stapleton, in the wake of her death in May, was lauded for her acting career. She is perhaps best known for appearing on the television series “All in the Family” from 1968-79.

But Stapleton helped save Val-Kill, the former Hyde Park residence of Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Stapleton traveled to Hyde Park many times, portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt in readings and testified before Congress in support of work launched by the Hyde Park Visual Environment Committee. Val-Kill was eventually taken over by the National Park Service and today draws tourists from around the world.

“Jean was there when the lights weren’t shining on her,” said Joyce Ghee of Hyde Park, a former Dutchess County historian.

Ghee and former county resident Joan Spence, the first executive director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, launched the Visual Environment Committee. The majority of work undertaken to save Val-Kill was done by the committee’s Cottage Committee, which included as a volunteer Curtis Roosevelt, grandson of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Emmy-winning actress’s work on behalf of Val-Kill helped preserve a site of deep historic importance, revealed another side of the woman known for playing the dim-witted wife of cranky Archie Bunker on television and underscored Dutchess County’s long-standing relationship with celebrities.

“She was so down to earth — wonderful,” said Spence, who worked in the administration of the late County Executive Lucille Pattison.

Val-Kill history

The origins of Val-Kill can be traced to Stone Cottage, which Franklin Roosevelt had built on the site after his wife and her friends complained they had no place to entertain guests and work for their causes, according to the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill. Eleanor Roosevelt’s friends, Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, lived in Stone Cottage from 1925 to 1947. Eleanor Roosevelt joined them there for weekends and vacations.

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Not long after Stone Cottage was built, Eleanor Roosevelt and her two friends, along with another friend, Caroline O’Day, established Val-Kill Furniture, which aimed to boost the local economy by training local residents in furniture making. The business survived the Great Depression but was not a financial success and closed in 1936.

In 1937, Eleanor Roosevelt converted the factory into an apartment for herself and her personal secretary, Malvina “Tommy” Thompson. Val-Kill Cottage became her “private sanctuary,” according to the Eleanor Roosevelt Center, and, after FDR’s death in 1945, the former first lady moved there permanently. Her son, John, moved there with his family and in 1970 it was sold to Long Island doctors who planned to turn it into a nursing home and retirement community.

Saving Val-Kill

The Hyde Park Visual Environment Committee — an outgrowth of a committee put in place by the Cornell Cooperative Extension — began its efforts to save Val-Kill in 1975.

Ghee received a phone call from a board member who lived near Val-Kill and learned that state officials had visited the site with an eye toward turning it into a state park.

Ghee felt her committee should be involved and brought into her efforts Warren Hill, who was the National Park Service superintendent in Hyde Park. Ghee got to know Hill while networking with him and William Emerson, who at the time was director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park.

“The place had just turned into a slum,” Ghee said of Val-Kill. “It was so bad. The only house in good shape was Stone Cottage.”

Hill put Ghee and Spence in touch with Nancy Dubner, who was working for Lt. Gov. Mary Krupsak in the administration of Gov. Hugh Carey.

Dubner had coordinated the visit by state officials to Val-Kill, but the state’s enthusiasm for turning the property into a state park was not strong.

Dubner — who had known Eleanor Roosevelt — met with Ghee and Spence and became involved.

Portraying Mrs. Roosevelt

Ghee and Spence learned from Emerson that Stapleton had visited the library to research a role portraying Eleanor Roosevelt. Stapleton was asked in the fall of 1975 to portray Roosevelt in a television special that was never filmed.

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“... I came to Hyde Park with a writer to do some research,” Stapleton told the Journal in 1982.

“I immersed myself in the library and then we went to see Val-Kill which, at the time, was still in private hands, rented out,” she said. “I was very moved.”

Dubner wrote to Stapleton on letterhead from her boss’ office, asking if she would help save Val-Kill. Stapleton not only said ‘yes,’ but agreed to participate in a reading, playing the former first lady at a 1976 presentation for the public about Val-Kill at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park.

“People closed their eyes and they thought they were hearing Mrs. Roosevelt,” Spence said. “It was definitely a major turning point.”

After Stapleton had finished, Ghee said, the audience “hooted and hollered and came forward and said they wanted to be members of the Hyde Park Visual Environment Committee. Jean was so thrilled with the response that she got, that they did see her as Eleanor Roosevelt.”

After that performance, Stapleton said of Eleanor Roosevelt, “I always admired her. She was part of my life as I grew up.”

The script used for Stapleton’s first appearance at FDR High School was turned into a film by famed television producer Norman Lear, which featured Stapleton and was used to generate interest in the efforts to save Val-Kill.

She gave a second reading at the high school and became a board member of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Val-Kill, Inc., which evolved into the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill.

Stapleton was made an honorary citizen of Hyde Park in 1977, the same year in which she testified before Congress in support of Val-Kill being named a National Historic Site.

Stapleton traveled to Hyde Park in 1981 for the filming of “First Lady of the World” about Roosevelt, which aired on CBS the following year.

Stapleton also portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt in a reading held in Hyde Park to mark the 100th anniversary of the former first lady’s birth.

“She must have been a very special woman to want to help,” Irene Morris of Hyde Park said of Stapleton. “She’ll be missed.”

While in Hyde Park, Stapleton sometimes stayed at the homes of committee members, Ghee said. On occasion, she welcomed them into her home in California.

“She was thoughtful,” Ghee said. “She could be funny, but she could also be serious. She was a good listener.”

A bill in May 1977 was signed into law establishing the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site.

Spence said the experience taught her “if there are people that really believe in achieving something, I think you can do it.”